Wildlife Habitation

We love the situation of our home in St. George as we are entertained (and tormented at times) by the wildlife that lives "next door" to us. These baby geese have grown since I first "met" them, and perhaps because they are bigger now, their parents are not so skiddish about strangers. They marched right over to me and I was prepared with a bag of food (cat food really, but the geese didn't seem to mind!) and they filled their tummies. I think they would have eaten right out of my hand, but I didn't know if it was wise for them to be that tame.

There were seven goslings to begin with, but I think one of our resident blue herons gobbled one up as I witnessed the male goose chasing him off on several occasions. Fortunately, I never saw a gosling in the heron's talons or mouth...it's bad enough to watch him fish each day.

Mr. Turtle also came for a couple of visits this trip, but I have yet to be able to feed him. Working on that.

We were on "mud swallow" alert as we watched hundreds of them soaring over the pond. Though it is fascinating to watch them skim the water, making mud of the dirt in their mouths and then construct a mud home in the eaves of houses nearby, the "houses" are a major mess to clean up as we had to do last year. But by today the swarming swallows seemed to have gone elsewhere. And then suddenly, just as we were about to leave, we saw several swallows "buzzing" our back deck. Upon examination we found the beginnings of a mud birdhome and some determined birds! Waving my arms wildly was obviously a temporary fix, so Bill made a concoction of Pinesol and vinegar and sprayed it on the chosen spot (after I had knocked down the beginnings of the mud home.) I hope when we go south next time we don't find that the concoction had dissolved the stucco and a thriving swallow neighborhood under our eaves!

Also, on this trip, we woke up one morning and noticed that the backyard grass had been ripped out all over the place. Some animal with big claws had been looking for bugs/grubs in the grass and torn it to shreds. (We learned later that it was a skunk.) Once again Bill sprayed a concoction on the grass that stunk to high heaven and is supposed to deter the animals. We'll see on that one, too. We may have no grass when we return.

And then, of course, there is the spraying for cockroaches and other creepy crawlies that would love to reclaim the desert neighborhood. This must be done monthly. It is a constant vigil to stay on top of the wildlife situation in St. George.

Unrelated to wildlife, but a situation to be dealt with each visit, is the bailing out of water in our crawl space. We have never found the source, but are thinking that it must be ground water as we have exhausted every other possibility with the exception of tearing out the walls in our stairway to exam the exit pipes. So, though scooping up a bucket of water in the two holes we dug in the crawl space every couple of days does nothing to dry out the ground or solve the problem, it makes us feel that we are doing SOMETHING!

So even with all these situations...did I mention the geese migration when hundreds of geese fly into the pond at night and shoot us right out of our beds with their party making?...WE STILL LOVE BEING THERE!

Well, the random picture below is unrelated to anything, but it seems to me that we could live forever if we would always eat like this!!!! Yum Yum!